Wilhelm zu Innhausen and Knyphausen

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Wilhelm zu Innhausen and Knyphausen

Wilhelm Reichsfreiherr zu Innhausen and Knyphausen (born November 4, 1716 at Lütetsburg Palace , East Friesland ; † December 7, 1800 in Kassel ) fought as Lieutenant General of the subsidiary troops of Hesse-Kassel under British command in the North American War of Independence against George Washington .

Life

In 1734 Wilhelm von Innhausen and Knyphausen entered the service of Hesse-Kassel at the instigation of his uncle, General von Berlepsch, and thus withdrew from the Prussian service, which later led to difficulties with Frederick the Great . He took part in the Seven Years' War , but his historical hour came later. On the basis of a subsidy agreement with England, Knyphausen led a Hessian auxiliary corps of 6,000 men to North America in 1776. Such operations were common at all times, but the propaganda of the French Revolution later judged this case as an example of the worst abuse of sovereign power.

In Otterndorf in Land Hadeln , even before the Declaration of Independence of the United States , which took place in July 1776, he embarked his auxiliary corps, landed after a crossing of 20 weeks on October 18, 1776 in New York and moved his headquarters first to New Rochelle on Staten Island . Under the pressure of 30,000 men, mostly Germans, whom the British Commander-in-Chief, William Howe , gathered on Long Island , George Washington had to evacuate New York shortly before. Already on November 16, Knyphausen stormed the heavily fortified Fort Washington ( Battle of Fort Washington ) “on York Island in the Hudson” against Howe's orders on his own initiative , which was then named “Fort Knyphausen” to perpetuate the fame of this deed . He became the commandant of this fort, on the site of which a district of New York rises today, which also remained named after him for a long time. Remains of the fort still rise near the northern tip of Manhattan on the highest point of the island, "which was heroically but unsuccessfully defended against the British in November 1776" (German: which was heroically but unsuccessfully defended against the British in November 1776 ).

Monument commemorating the Battle of Fort Washington, below the entrance to the George Washington Bridge in New York.

The main front of the battle was now on the Delaware . Howe's hesitation played a trump card to Washington. At Christmas 1776, Knyphausen's Hessian regiment near Trenton was captured by the Americans. For this he won at Princeton in early January and liberated part of New Jersey. He then commanded a division at the front between Head of Elk and Brandywine Creek . In the summer of 1777 Knyphausen received the supreme command of half of the entire expeditionary force against Philadelphia . Now the British-German side got the upper hand. Knyphausen defeated Washington on September 11th at Brandywine and together with Howe conquered Philadelphia on September 27th. On October 4th, he decided the defeat of the American Liberation Army at the Battle of Germantown . George Washington was forced to move his winter quarters to the Valley Forge area, where General von Steuben carried out his famous reorganization of the army of freedom fighters .

At about the same time, the English also tried to advance south from Canada. Their defeat at Saratoga Springs resulted in the French entering into an alliance with George Washington (February 6, 1778). Howe and Knyphausen tried in vain to beat Washington's army at Chestnut Hill in order to drive them across the Alleghanies. In June 1778, Lord Clinton, Howe's successor, had to evacuate Philadelphia. Knyphausen covered the retreat of the English to New York. Fighting ensued in Westchester County . In December 1779, Clinton appointed him in command of the city of New York, the main target of freedom fighters. In the defense of New Jersey against the French, Knyphausen and his auxiliary corps played a leading role. In January 1780 he had his troops advance across the Hudson to Paulus Hook and from Staten Island across the Raritan River. In June he moved to Elizabeth Town Point with 5000 men and took command of the wounded British General Sterling fighting against militias and partisans . After an advance to Springfield, which was destroyed in the course of the operations, he withdrew the force to Staten Island. Since the English were massively harassed by the French in Canada, they decided to station Knyphausen with his Hessians on the Canadian east coast between 1780 and 1782. Knyphausen's headquarters were temporarily located in Halifax , where there is still a memorial and his coat of arms in St. Paul's Church .

In October 1781, Washington forced the English to surrender in Virginia. In 1782 Knyphausen returned to England with Lord Clinton, where he was in London from King George III. was honored with a lifelong pension of £ 300 a year. When he returned to Hessen, he was triumphantly appointed governor of the city of Kassel. In 1788 he took his leave and returned to Lütetsburg.

family

In 1771 he married Amelia von Seyboldsdorff , daughter of General Carl Ulrich von Seyboldsdorff from Kurköln. She died in America in 1778. After his return he married Dorothea von Westernhagen (* February 15, 1760; † 1803) in 1782 . Both marriages were without children. He himself died as a result of an eye operation in 1800.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Friedrich Jacobi, European genealogical manual , p. 177, family tree Seyboldsdorff Here: Carl Albrect, and the daughter died on May 14, 1778 in Ziegenhain
  2. ↑ Gothaisches genealogical pocket book of the noble houses: at the same time the nobility register of the German aristocratic association. Part A, 1915, p. 808
personal data
SURNAME Innhausen and Knyphausen, Wilhelm zu
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Innhausen and Knyphausen, Wilhelm Reichsfreiherr too
BRIEF DESCRIPTION General of the Hessian auxiliaries in the North American War of Independence
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1716
PLACE OF BIRTH Lütetsburg Castle , East Frisia
DATE OF DEATH 7th December 1800
Place of death kassel